What Is Average Handle Time? Tips and Strategies to Improve It in 2024

Average handle time (AHT) is one of the most important metrics that customer support and service teams use to evaluate performance and efficiency. Put simply, AHT measures the average amount of time it takes for an agent to resolve a customer issue from start to finish, across all communication channels.

As customer expectations for fast and effective service continue to rise, it‘s critical that service teams make reducing AHT a key priority and initiative. Long wait times and sluggish support experiences will drive customers away to competitors that can address their needs more promptly.

In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll break down everything you need to know about average handle time in 2024 – what it is, why it matters, how to calculate it, benchmarks to aim for, and proven tips to optimize it. Our goal is to equip you with an actionable roadmap to streamline your support operations and delight your customers with swift resolutions. Let‘s dive in!

What Factors Are Included in Average Handle Time?

To understand AHT, it‘s important to recognize the different components that are factored into this metric:

1. Talk Time: The amount of time an agent actually spends talking with the customer to understand the problem and provide a solution. This is from the time the agent connects with the customer until the call/chat ends.

2. Hold Time: Any time when the customer is placed on hold while the agent looks up information, consults with a supervisor or expert, or performs troubleshooting. The clock is still running even though the agent may not be directly engaging with the customer.

3. Wrap-up/Follow-up Time: After the primary interaction ends, agents usually need to perform follow-up tasks like updating the ticket, logging call notes, scheduling a follow-up, etc. This time is counted since it‘s still part of the effort required to fully resolve the issue.

AHT accounts for the total time across all these areas. The formula is:

AHT = (Total Talk Time + Total Hold Time + Total Wrap-up Time) / Number of Issues Handled

By adding up each time component for all customer interactions in a given period and dividing by the total number of interactions, you arrive at the overall average handle time.

For example, let‘s say your team handled 250 customer calls this week. The total talk time was 1000 minutes, total hold time was 500 minutes, and total wrap-up time was 750 minutes. Your AHT for the week would be:

(1000 + 500 + 750) / 250 = 9 minutes per issue

While this simple calculation can be used across all support channels, there are a couple of variations to note:

• For email and ticket-based support, there is no hold time, so you would omit that from the equation.
• For live chat, you would track the elapsed time from when the agent first responds to the customer until the chat is concluded. Hold time is irrelevant here as well.

The goal is to consistently measure AHT for each communication channel using the same methodology so you can benchmark your team‘s efficiency and identify areas for improvement.

Average Handle Time Industry Standards & Benchmarks

So what is considered a "good" average handle time to aim for? The short answer is it varies quite a bit depending on your specific industry and the complexity of issues your team handles.

However, it‘s helpful to be aware of general industry standards so you can see how your team stacks up to peers and competitors. According to data from Cornell‘s Customer Relationship Benchmark Survey of over 300 companies:

• Across all industries, the average handle time for a customer phone call is 6 minutes and 3 seconds
• For email tickets, the average is 2-3 times longer, often taking 12-18 minutes to resolve
• Live chat interactions tend to be solved faster with an average handle time of 3-5 minutes

According to the Talkdesk Contact Center KPI Report, here are some more specific AHT industry benchmarks:

• Retail & Ecommerce: 3 minutes 29 seconds
• Financial Services: 4 minutes 5 seconds
• Telecom: 2 minutes 36 seconds
• Travel & Hospitality: 3 minutes 30 seconds

Keep in mind these are averages and your team‘s AHT may vary based on different factors like the types of issues you handle, the products/services you support, and your customer base.

Rather than comparing your AHT to other companies, the most important thing is to continuously measure your own team‘s AHT over time and look for opportunities to bring it down while still maintaining high customer satisfaction levels. Reducing AHT by even 10-15 seconds can have a major impact on the volume of issues your team can handle and your overall operational costs.

5 Proven Strategies to Reduce Average Handle Time

Now that you know how to measure AHT and what to aim for, let‘s explore some hands-on tactics to optimize it. Shaving time off your average handle time without sacrificing service quality requires a combination of agent enablement, process refinement, and smart technology deployment.

1. Provide proactive omnichannel support

One of the best ways to reduce AHT is to prevent customer issues from arising in the first place. By offering proactive support across all your customer engagement channels, you can eliminate many common problems and questions that would otherwise turn into time-consuming interactions for your agents.

Some examples:

• Create a robust online knowledge base with FAQs, product guides, tutorials, and troubleshooting tips. Make this easily accessible from your website, app, and support portal.
• Implement an IVR (interactive voice response) system on your support line to direct customers to relevant self-serve options before connecting with a live agent.
• Deploy AI-powered chatbots on your website and messaging channels to automatically answer basic questions and perform simple tasks 24/7.
• Send proactive notifications to customers about known issues, outages, shipping delays, etc. to get ahead of inbound inquiries.

By guiding customers to help themselves first, you can dramatically reduce your inbound issue volume and free up agents to focus their time on more complex, higher-value interactions.

2. Arm agents with the right knowledge & tools

To resolve issues quickly, agents need instant access to the right information, resources, and tools at their fingertips. Hunting around for answers or struggling with cumbersome systems will lead to longer handle times and frustrate both agents and customers.

Some ways to enable your agents for speedy service:

• Build out an internal knowledge base with troubleshooting guides, call scripts, product info, key service policies, etc. Make sure it has robust search capabilities so agents can find answers fast.
• Create call flows and decision trees to help agents diagnose issues and determine the proper resolution steps to follow.
• Integrate your ticketing and CRM systems so agents can quickly pull up customer data and interaction history without toggling between programs.
• Provide agents with collaboration tools like chat and video conferencing so they can easily consult with managers or subject matter experts to solve tricky issues on first contact.

The goal is to minimize the time agents spend searching for information so they can focus on engaging with the customer and providing a solution. Empowering agents with the right knowledge and tools is one of the most effective ways to slash average handle time.

3. Leverage automation & AI

While human agents are still essential for handling complex, emotionally-charged issues, there are many routine support tasks that can be automated to save time. Offloading these manual processes to machines can significantly speed up resolution and allow agents to focus their energy where it matters most.

Some areas ripe for automation:

• Ticket triaging and routing to get issues to the right agent or department faster
• Collating customer data from multiple systems to prep agents for interactions
• Drafting templated email responses based on ticket topic and priority
• Scheduling follow-up activities and reminders
• Capturing and logging call notes
• Triggering customer surveys after issue resolution

In addition to process automation, AI-powered tools like chatbots, virtual agents, and agent assist technology can help shoulder more of the support workload. These intelligent systems can engage with customers, diagnose issues, recommend solutions, and even complete transactions within seconds. By handling the initial stages of service interactions, AI allows agents to focus their time on more high-touch, high-stakes issues.

Of course, you don‘t want to automate everything as human connection is still vital for complex problems and VIP customers. The key is to selectively deploy automation and AI for the right use cases to improve efficiency without degrading experience.

4. Invest in robust agent onboarding & training

Agent preparedness has a huge impact on average handle time. New hires who lack the proper training will inevitably struggle to resolve issues in a timely manner, while veteran agents can quickly get rusty if their skills aren‘t kept sharp. Investing in your team‘s development is crucial for maintaining a speedy service operation.

Some tips for effective agent learning & development:

• Create a comprehensive onboarding program that covers key resources, tools, processes, and product/service info in depth. Use shadowing and call reviews to reinforce concepts.
• Develop ongoing training modules to educate agents on new issues, products, policies, and technologies. Make microlearning content easily accessible for continuous reinforcement.
• Implement regular call coaching sessions where managers provide 1 on 1 feedback to agents on specific areas of improvement, including efficiency.
• Launch team challenges and contests to incentivize agents to beat their personal bests in AHT and share winning techniques with teammates.
• Hire dedicated learning & development managers to create curriculums tailored to your team‘s needs and maturity levels.

By prioritizing your agents‘ professional development, you set them up for success in delivering swift, effective customer service. A well-prepared agent is an efficient agent.

5. Relentlessly measure & optimize (without sacrificing quality)

Finally, instilling a culture of continuous improvement is essential for keeping average handle times low over the long haul. It‘s not enough to implement some changes and declare victory – you need to consistently measure your AHT, identify new barriers, and find innovative solutions to chip away at it further.

Some ways to build this mindset:

• Monitor AHT daily/weekly across all channels and agent groups. Look for problematic spikes or patterns.
• Track AHT alongside other key metrics like first contact resolution and customer satisfaction to ensure you‘re not speeding things up at the expense of quality.
• Analyze your longest calls/tickets to surface challenges that are inflating AHT. Focus improvement efforts there.
• Gather feedback from agents on the top obstacles that slow them down and impede fast resolution.
• Run experiments and A/B tests on new tools, processes, and agent practices to see what moves the needle.
• Benchmark your AHT against industry peers and share wins and lessons across your network.

The most effective service teams view AHT optimization as an ongoing initiative, not a one-and-done task. By relentlessly measuring your performance and iterating your approach, you can continue to push the boundaries of service efficiency and stay ahead of rising customer expectations.

Balancing Speed with Quality Service

While reducing average handle time should be a key priority for any customer service organization, it‘s important not to get so fixated on speed that you lose sight of your ultimate goal: delivering exceptional customer experiences.

There can be a temptation to rush interactions or take risky shortcuts in pursuit of hitting aggressive AHT targets. But racing through calls and chats without fully listening to customers, properly diagnosing issues, and providing thorough resolutions will likely cause more problems than it solves. Agents may have to deal with more repeat contacts and complaints, which cancel out any temporary efficiency gains.

Instead of rewarding agents solely based on how quickly they can wrap up interactions, make sure you also incentivize them on the quality of the service they provide. Track customer satisfaction (CSAT) and net promoter (NPS) scores to gauge whether your team is meeting expectations. Use quality assurance techniques like call monitoring and customer feedback analysis to coach agents on areas of improvement. And most importantly, empower your agents to take the time they need to make customers happy, even if that means a slightly longer handle time.

Balancing speed and quality is the key to AHT optimization. Equip your agents to work efficiently, but also give them permission to slow down and go the extra mile when the customer‘s need demands it. An interaction that takes 2 minutes longer but results in a thoroughly resolved issue and a delighted customer is well worth the time. Don‘t let AHT take precedence over the
fundamentals of excellent service.

Put it into Practice

Customer expectations for instantaneous, always-on service will only intensify as we head into 2024 and beyond. With so many on-demand options at their fingertips, consumers have little patience for long wait times and sluggish support experiences. Can your service organization keep up?

Reducing your average handle time is a challenging but vital initiative for any customer-centric business. By streamlining your processes, empowering your agents, and deploying smart automation technology, you can gradually chip away at AHT and set a new bar for rapid resolution. At the same time, don‘t let the pursuit of speed compromise the quality of service you deliver. The goal should be to work smarter and faster in service of the customer, not just check a box.

Use the strategies and tips we‘ve shared here to start optimizing your team‘s AHT and overall efficiency:

• Offer proactive, omnichannel support to prevent issues
• Arm agents with easy access to the right knowledge and tools
• Leverage AI and automation for suitable use cases
• Invest in robust agent onboarding and skill development
• Continuously measure and iterate your approach

Most importantly, instill a culture of continuous improvement where every team member is committed to finding ways to resolve issues faster without sacrificing service excellence. By making AHT reduction an ongoing focus, you can get a step ahead of your competition, slash costs, and earn long-term loyalty from customers.
The path to speedy service is a marathon, not a sprint. But with the right mindset and techniques, your team has what it takes to lead the pack. Now go out there and make every customer second count!